"United 93"

Movie: United 93 (2006) 2001pm RATING: 9/10 Written and Directed by: Paul Greengrass MPAA: Rated R (for language, and some intense sequences of terror and violence). Runtime: 111 min. CAST… Lewis Alsamari: Saeed Al Ghamdi JJ Johnson: Captain Jason Dahl Trish Gates: Sandra Bradshaw Polly Adams: Deborah Welsh Cheyenne Jackson: Mark Bingham Opal Alladin: CeeCee Lyles Starla Benford: Wanda Anita Green Nancy McDoniel: Lorraine G. Bay David Alan Basche: Todd Beamer Richard Bekins: William Joseph Cashman Susan Blommaert: Jane Folger Ray Charleson: Joseph DeLuca Christian Clemenson: Thomas E. Burnett, Jr. Ben Sliney: Himself It is never the wrong time for a great film. United 93 is a great film, and will be seen as a great film generations from now. It exceeded any and every expectation I had, and put to rest any doubt as to whether or not this story needs to be told less than five years after 9/11. United 93 is conveyed from a point of view that is so unique in its objectivity that it is astounding. From beginning to end, there is no way to know what will happen next in this story, even though we saw what happened that day over and over again. That is because, essentially, the point of view we are given only allows us to watch and react to events as they occur in real time. We are placed in an airplane, a few control towers, and a military security building, but we are helpless, because we aren’t given any advance information that anything bad is going to happen. The film begins and we hear a Muslim prayer spoken by a hijacker. We’re taken to an airport where we board a plane with ordinary people – I found myself feeling like just a regular person looking at all the other regular people on a regular plane. You won’t recognize more than one or two of the actors. They’ve been chosen and cast perfectly. We hear what we normally hear on a plane: airport background sounds; people talking at random about nothing special. United 93 does not force archetypes on us (the beautiful blonde stewardess, the handsome Euro-businessman in the expensive suit, the noisy airplane brats that have to be shown the cockpit before they’ll stop screaming). We know nothing about anybody. Thank God. But we’re all on the plane together, waiting on the runway to take off. United 93 places us in various control towers at local and regional levels. Many of the control tower personnel in the movie are the real people that worked in the towers on 9/11, not actors. I counted over a dozen. I was amazed as I watched these people re-enact that day from their control towers. The words we hear are the words that control tower people really speak: They swear once in a while; they are allowed to stumble-stutter through a grammatically incorrect sentence without stopping the cameras. We are taken inside the National Air Traffic Control Center often as the film progresses. There are TV screens displaying maps of the United States, with countless dots representing every airplane in the air over the country. Ben Sliney, playing not just himself, but himself on 9/11, heads up the national center. He’s told of a possible hijacking early on, digests the information, then returns to his primary job of keeping the nation’s entire body of air traffic in the air and on-time whenever possible. He can have that job. I don’t want it. I haven’t had a job-related heart attack, and I’d like to keep it that way as long as possible. More hijackings happen and there is frustration and confusion in the control towers. The towers share their information, but a controller can’t reach into the radar screen and make an airplane go where he wants it to go. All we can do is watch the radar, just like the controllers. By now everyone knows something very bad is happening. There is supposed to be a military liaison at the national control center, but Ben Sliney keeps getting told that the person isn’t there. He is frustrated. So are we. Protocol calls for the President to make the calls in this type of situation. The President can’t be located, we’re told. More frustration. We’re taken to a military operations center. The military is told of the hijackings and tries to form a strategy. But, a strategy for what? All they know is that planes have been hijacked. Then someone points to a television set. CNN News has a live picture up of a smoking hole in the World Trade Center. They say a small plane hit the building. The controllers see the pictures and realize a small plane could not have flown completely through a building like that. And so it is deduced that the first hijacked plane, which has disappeared from the radar, hit the Trade Center building. Next thought: It’s an accident, right? When you steal an airplane you fly it around and make demands about political prisoners and money, don’t you? Then, live, we and the controllers see the second plane fly directly into the World Trade Center, right on CNN. Only then was it clear that this was a planned attack. On the U.S.? On New York? By whom? The president still can’t be located. There are two more hijacked planes in the air, though. The military decides to bring these planes down using the most immediate tools at their disposal. There are two available fighter jets in Michigan. Unfortunately, they are unarmed. What next? It is decided the fighters will be crashed into the airliners -- the fighter pilots will eject on impact. Meanwhile, a third hijacked airplane crashes into the Pentagon. Another plane, believed to be hijacked, turns out to be safe. That leaves one more hijacked plane in the air, flying toward the east coast from Cleveland. United Airlines flight 93. We’re aboard United 93 now. The hijackers have taken over. The pilot and co-pilot are dead. In the back of the plane the passengers, crouched down in their seats, have just learned what is happening by using the airplane’s air-to-ground telephones, and their cell phones. They've learned their plane will be crashed into a building, not flown around until political demands are met. A man, whose wife is watching CNN TV news, gets the up-to-the-minute details of the story and passes that information on to the others on the plane. Messages -- goodbye messages -- are left on answering machines for loved ones. And then, “Let’s roll.” Those incredible words are spoken by one of the passengers as they – we – storm the cockpit. United 93 was headed for the U.S. Capitol. It crashed in Pennsylvania. WE crashed in Pennsylvania. Director Paul Greengrass has honored us as much as he honored United 93's passengers, because he allowed us to be among heroes for just a few minutes. Greengrass himself is a hero for making United 93. So are the many actors in this film who were actually there on 9/11. They did the best they could with the knowledge they had. We know that now because of this film. -2001pm -30-